Parry Labs LLC, a defense technology company that creates a framework to integrate software for mission-critical systems, today announced the completion of its first institutional investment round of $80 million led by Capitol Meridian Partners.

Co-founder and Chief Executive John Parkes told SiliconANGLE in an interview that the company has been bootstrapped since its founding in 2016. The round also attracted investments from True Ventures, as well as 3Wire Partners and Teamworthy Ventures.

“We’re centered around where Parry started and where we’re going, which is: How do you solve the challenge of delivering software to complex systems for the military?” Parkes said. “Things like tanks, planes, ships, et cetera. How do you deliver software into these complex systems, and do that quickly at scale across a diverse ecosystem?”

Parry’s business, Parkes said, provides an open architecture framework to help deliver ruggedized hardware and software for military surfaces in networks so that third-party software can be deployed into the field and at the edge. For example, how would someone take software-based infrastructure approaches as you would see with Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure but apply that with a military context and how data would interact with each unique situation?

There are several core principles at work, such as “safety-critical,” where the software has to be able to be failsafe and have redundant fallbacks, and “mission-critical,” meaning that someone’s life depends on its operating correctly at all times.

“There’s a lot of digital engineering and modern systems technologies that are colliding with software, and so Parry is helping bring those together and help our customers accelerate software delivery,” Parkes explained. “We’re not an app developer. We don’t write widgets, apps, AI, algorithms or things like that. Rather, we create the framework for modern critical systems at the edge, as we call it, or the military internet of things.”

The military has a lot of hardware that needs to be updated and there are a lot of vendors that want to integrate their systems for defense. Parry Labs acts as a digital systems integrator for modernizing legacy platforms and bringing new development online faster.

At the core of Parry Labs’ offerings is the Stratia Software Stack, a comprehensive mission-critical technology stack that provides an industry-leading software operating environment for systems integration. It takes into account the Modular Open Systems Approach, also called MOSA, for each service and domain, which is the preferred method of the U.S. Department of Defense for implementing open systems, and is required by law. MOSA frameworks include architecture, standards, implementation and conformance to requirements that make it possible to adapt and modify systems.

“The Alcoa steel of a tank doesn’t need modernizing, but the software that makes it connect and understand the environment around it needs to modernize very quickly,” said Parkes. “Even aircraft airframes just need simple digital overhauls versus ‘throw them away and build new things.’”

Photo: Parry Labs